1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an arrangement of fuel cell intake and exhaust system components in a fuel cell powered vehicle, where the vehicle is provided with an air cleaner for taking in and filtering ambient air, and a compressor for compressing filtered air and generating reactive gas.
2. Description of the Background Art
In recent years, fuel cell powered vehicles have been developed, in which electric power generated by a fuel cell system is supplied to a motor, and wheels of the vehicle are driven by the motor. In this fuel cell system, electric power is generated by a chemical reaction in a fuel cell stack between hydrogen, as a fuel gas, and oxygen as a reactive gas (hereinafter called simply a “fuel cell”).
In this system, while the fuel gas is stored at high pressure in a fuel cylinder, reactive gas must be generated by taking in ambient air and compressing it to make it high-pressure air. In addition, it is desirable that reactive gas to be supplied to the fuel cell does not contain impurities. Therefore, a supercharging mechanism (for example, as disclosed in JP-A No. 216986/2001) may be employed, and impurities are removed from the air by an air cleaner before the air is compressed by a compressor, to generate reactive gas which is then supplied to the fuel cell.
In a conventional fuel cell powered vehicle in which a vehicle driving motor is driven by electric power supplied from a fuel cell, the fuel cell is located almost in the center of the vehicle body. The air for supply to the fuel cell is taken in through an intake port (duct) provided at the front part of the vehicle body, namely in front of the fuel cell and exhausted through an exhaust port (duct) at the rear part of the vehicle body, namely behind the fuel cell. This arrangement is disclosed in, for example, JP-A No. 231108/2001.
In the above conventional structure, intake system components such as an air cleaner and a supercharger may be positioned so as to be considerably distant from exhaust system components such as a dilution box and a muffler, with the fuel cell between them. In this arrangement, the components are difficult to install and maintain.
As mentioned above, the supercharging mechanism of the fuel cell system has an air cleaner and a compressor where the air cleaner, the compressor, and the fuel cell are connected by piping. Depending on the arrangement of these devices, the piping may have to be long or large and weighty, and also there is concern that increased air-flow resistance in the piping might deteriorate the power generating efficiency of the fuel cell system. Particularly in a fuel cell powered motorcycle, the installation space for the devices is limited and reduction in the size of the piping used in the supercharging mechanism is anticipated for space saving.
Therefore, the present invention provides an arrangement of intake and exhaust system components in a fuel cell powered vehicle which makes it easier to install the intake system components and exhaust system components of a fuel cell to a vehicle body, and improves their maintainability.
The present invention also has an object to provide a fuel cell powered vehicle in which the weight and size of a supercharging mechanism of a fuel cell system are reduced and the air-flow resistance in the supercharging mechanism is decreased to improve the power generating efficiency of the fuel cell system.